Thursday, May 29, 2014

Jim DeFelice is the author of 14 New York Times best-sellers, including the
recently published Code Name: Johnny Walker and American Sniper.
He owns two chainsaws and a sharp axe.

Browsing around the web, I see lots of lists from writers I
know about their favorite writing tools – laptop, pen, iMac, pocket notebook,
that sort of thing. I’m always impressed: It’s amazing how eloquent people can
be when extolling the virtues of a retractable 2B lead pencil. I love passion
in writing.

But not once in any of these lists have I seen the most
important writer’s tool mentioned. I’m talking about the chainsaw, of course, a
tool no writer should be without.

I don’t mean this metaphorically. I’m talking about an
honest, two-cycle, pull-to-start, chop your torso in two chainsaw. The louder
the better.

I’m partial to the Echo professional series, but finding the
proper chainsaw is like finding your writing voice – you have to work it a bit
before you settle down.

Actually, I have two chainsaws, a 20-inch bruiser for the
big trees, and a remarkably versatile 14-inch model that is the Shakespeare of
saws, able to chop up everything from sonnets to Durham Wood.

I find the ideas flow like oil on the guide bar when I’m
cutting; give me a nice study maple to chop up, and I’ll have six new plot
twists in no time. Some writers burn incense for inspiration; the scent of
spent gas and fresh sawdust does much more for me.

In fact, chainsaws are so important to my work I’ve started
bringing them to New York for editorial meetings. There’s nothing like a
rapidly rotating blade to keep an editorial discussion on track. Maybe it’s
just a coincidence, but I have yet to lose an argument with an editor while carrying
one of my saws. And just last week, the 14-incher helped me demonstrate what I
thought of the job the copy editor had done on my last book.

As a side benefit, finding a seat in the subway has become a
heck of lot easier.

Computers and pencils, notebooks and dictionaries, pens and
erasers – they all have their place. In my office, that’s between the gas can
and the chain sharpener.

Tuesday, May 27, 2014

The isolation of the dimly lit parking lot behind my Seattle apartment building had always seemed bleak and foreboding. It loomed at the bottom of a hill bordering a marshy area of Portage Bay, too far from the street for anyone to hear a call for help late at night when I usually arrived home from work.

Janice Ott

It was around midnight that July night in 1974 when I parked in an open slot at water’s edge and scanned the area with more caution than usual. One of my coworkers hadn’t shown up for work that day and no one, including her family, knew what had happened to her.

I didn’t know Janice Ott well. She was a relatively new employee, a juvenile probation caseworker at the King County Juvenile Court in Seattle. She was 23 years old, five-one and a hundred pounds. She had long blond hair and an effervescent smile. I worked in detention on the opposite side of the court system, but we both encountered some pretty tough kids. Many of the employees, including me, had received death threats at one time or another, threats from people who were more than capable of doing the job. Janice’s disappearance left many of us wondering if one of the juvenile offenders had killed her.

As I got out of the car all I could hear was water lapping the shore and a breeze agitating the cattails. I hurried across the parking lot and opened the basement door. Before me, masked in shadows, was a long, windowless hallway with another door at the far end. Every step I took hiked the needling tension on the nape of my neck. As I opened the second door, I heard the first slam shut. Somebody was following me.

I ran. Up the stairs. Kept running until I was inside my apartment. My back pressed against the locked door as my heart slammed against my ribs.
It wasn’t until my pulse slowed and my mind cleared that I realized I hadn’t heard footsteps behind me, only the door slamming. That’s when I realized it was not a killer stalking me but the wind sucking the first door closed. I felt like a complete wuss.

Composite sketch of "Ted"

In the days that followed, we learned the details of Janice’s disappearance. It had been a warm, sunny Sunday. No Seattleite stays inside on those rare days, including Janice. Her husband was out of town, so she rode her bicycle to Lake Sammamish State Park to sunbathe on the beach and enjoy the day with about 40,000 other people. I’d made that same trip myself on numerous occasions.
A clean-cut man named “Ted,” described by witnesses as good-looking, approached several young women that day. He had a cast on his arm and was asking for help loading a sailboat onto his car. Witnesses say at least one person turned him down, one got to Bundy’s brown Volkswagen Beetle and saw there was no sailboat and fled. He approached Janice at around 12:30 that the afternoon. A witness said she looked annoyed but agreed to help him. Later that day, he took Denise Naslund from the same park using the same pretext.

On September 7, 1974, two months after her disappearance, the skeletal remains of Janice, Denise and another victim were found in a wooded area approximately two miles from Lake Sammamish. After that a more potent fear replaced the first, because a serial killer was hunting young women who looked a lot like me in places I had often visited. For a long time after that, every man driving a VW Beetle was suspect. Every set of footsteps, echoing behind me late at night seemed sinister. I became less inclined to help strangers or even engage with them in conversation.

Ted Bundy

Before he was executed in Florida on January 24, 1989, Bundy confessed to murdering at least 30 woman, including Janice, but hinted there might have been many more. He confirmed in gory detail how he had killed her and boasted that he kept her alive long enough to watch Denise die, although he later recanted that claim. I oppose the death penalty, but if anybody deserved to die it was arrogant, unrepentant Ted Bundy.

All these years after Janice’s murder, I still think about her, can still envision her walking down the hallway of the court with a bounce in her step and a sweet smile on her face. And I still wonder if Ted Bundy had approached me on the beach that day with a cast on his arm and a disarming smile, asking me to help him load a boat onto his car, would I have gone with him? I’d like to think I would have been the one who said no, but I can’t be sure and that will haunt me for the rest of my days.

On Monday, May 31st, I was again reminded of the tragedy of Janice’s death when Elliot Rodger, another disturbed young man, went on a rampage, murdering several young people near Santa Barbara, California. I thought of the obvious victims of this mass murder, those who died, those devastated family members and close friends left to wonder how this could have happened and why nobody had the power to stop it from happening. But there will be others, as well, those who knew the victims, perhaps not well, but well enough to forever be haunted by the events of that horrible day, those left to wonder how it was that they walked away alive.

As a writer, I also think about these events in relation to the characters I create. What wounds from my character's past make up the fears and expectations of the fictional present? As Sidley Lumet once said: “All good work requires self-revelation.” If true, I have more than enough material to fill several more books.

Monday, May 26, 2014

It was Pro Day at Penn State 27 years ago and I was on the practice field as the seniors went through agility drills. On the sidelines, NFL scouts watched and scribbled notes on scraps of paper. (There were no cell phones, iPads, or laptops).

Penn State had a terrific group of graduating seniors. Just months earlier, the team had won the national championship with its upset of heavily favored Miami, 14-10, in the Fiesta Bowl.

One player had every scout's eye. Shane Conlan. He was a consensus All-American linebacker who had been MVP of that Fiesta Bowl game with eight tackles and two interceptions of Vinny Testaverde.

I knew Shane a bit through his friendship with two players who were friends. Tim Johnson, from Florida, the All American defensive tackle who would go on to a 10 year NFL career before becoming a minister, and D.J. Dozier, the running back who would join the select few who played both NFL football and Major League Baseball.

Anyway, I'm standing next to Ray Wietecha, the college scout of the Green Bay Packers, which had just finished an abysmal year and were drafting fourth. (NFL aficionados will remember Wietecha as a center for the New York Giants in the 1950's and 60's An old-school, tough-as-nails guy). In this photo, he looks like he's still playing at age 45.

I remember looking at Wietecha's gnarled hands -- broken fingers going this way and that -- as he took notes.

"Number 31's really good," I said, referring to Conlan.

"Skinny legs," Wietecha replied.

"Fast. Great anticipation. Great ball sense."

"Skinny legs," Wietecha repeated.

In the NFL draft, with that fourth pick in the first round, the Packers took Brent Fullwood, a running back from Auburn. He played four years, and if you don't know his name, well, he was just okay. The Buffalo Bills took Conlan with the eighth pick. He becomes NFL Defensive Rookie of the Year, is named All-Pro three times, plays in three Pro Bowls, and selected to the Bills' All-Time 50th Anniversary team.

It tells the story of how then young Penn State assistant coach Tom (Scrap) Bradley, who would become one of college football's best recruiters, drove through a snowstorm to watch Conlan play BASKETBALL. Football season was long over. There was no video in those days, just some grainy 8 mm film, and precious little of that for Conlan's high school in Frewsberg, a school with just 94 seniors.

Conlan was 6-3, 175 pounds. Even in those days, that was far too skinny to play big-time college linebacker. Did I say big-time? Not only did Conlan lack any Division 1 scholarship offers, no small colleges expressed interest, either.

But Bradley liked what he saw on the basketball court. Even though Conlan only scored three points that night, his aggressiveness and fluid athleticism were easy to see. (Bradley's mentor, the great Joe Paterno, often scouted high school football players by watching them play basketball. Both men thought the sport showed overall athleticism in a way football -- particularly on film -- did not). Still, Conlan was not an easy sell at the coaches' meeting just a few days before signing date:

"No one on the staff really wants him," Bradley said. "Back then, I don't have much of a track record. I knew what I saw. But I started thinking: Maybe I don't know what I'm looking at. Finally, Joe pounds the table and says, 'You want him? You take him. But you gotta coach him. And you'd better be right.'"

So Penn State gave Conlan his one and only football scholarship offer.

"I owe Tom everything," Conlan told reporter Jones. "If he hadn't given me a shot, if he hadn't convinced Joe [Paterno] that I was the right kid for them, who knows what would have become of me?"

Lots of lessons here. How important is it to have someone who believes in you. And to have a mentor. And to make the most of your talents with the gifts you have.Skinny legs and All.

(A final word about that 1987 NFL Draft. The University of Miami provided three of the first nine players taken, an incredible number. Testaverde was the first player of the first round, running back Alonzo Highsmith went third and defensive tackle Jerome Brown ninth. For Penn State, besides Conlan going eighth, running back Dozier was chosen fourteenth. Overall, Miami had eight players chosen and Penn State thirteen). Paul Levine

Friday, May 23, 2014

Today I took the Oath of Allegiance to the United States of
America in Oakland, CA.I was one among
1206 immigrants from 112 countries across the globe. Peter, the man to my right
was a software engineer with Google; he was originally from Russia. The lady to
my left was from the Philippines.And
the two Canadians behind me really belted out The Star Spangled Banner when the time came – they could have been
leading the singing. It was a ceremony that seemed to veer between moments that
moved me to tears, to whole speeches of abject tedium.Sorry, but listening to instructions
on how to register my change of status with Social Security while I’m still
wiping away the tears that fell during the film featuring hopeful faces of
immigrants coming through Ellis Island, was a bit weird.But it was a glorious day.In fact, it felt like a wedding day, and in
some ways, I suppose it was. I didn’t get a ring, but I plighted my troth to
the USA after a long engagement.

You’ve followed me along through this process, so you know a
bit about what has come to pass. Every
step towards citizenship is pretty serious.
Immigration officials aren’t generally known for their comedic repartee. Keeping a straight face and fighting the urge
to quip is the order of the day (I’m a bit of a quipper). But clearly things change when you’re
“in.” I arrived at Oakland’s Paramount
Theater for the ceremony with my husband and my best American pal, Kas. They were directed up to the balcony where
friends and family were to be seated, while I joined the line of would-be
citizens. Even though I was “accepted”
following my interview on April 18th, I would not be anointed – so to
speak – until I'd attended the ceremony.

At every step of the way we immigrants were greeted by smiling officials from the US Citizenship and Immigration Service who said,
“Congratulations!”

First I had to hand
over my green card.“You’re an American
now,” said the woman checking me in.“You don’t need this any more.” I felt lost letting that little
card go – it had exited and entered the USA with me many times; we were travel buddies.When I
first came to America, I had terrible recurring dreams where I was in UK and
had lost my green card.I invariably
woke up crying due to the lingering thought that I couldn’t get back into the
US again.I remember visiting my parents
a few years ago, when my Dad was still alive – I mislaid my passport folder
with the green card inside, and I had a complete meltdown.It was my nightmare come true. I was turning
over clothes, pulling things out of my suitcase, and generally getting into a
state.My Dad – who was a very laid
back, methodical soul – came into my room and helped me look for it, and when
we found the green card (yes, in the suitcase), he held me while I wept with
relief.

My Dad adored America – he would have been so proud of me
today. He was thrilled when my brother became an American citizen about eight years ago.I think
it made Dad feel as if he were one step closer to being a cowboy – or to be
more accurate, to having those wide open spaces around him.And that’s probably where it all started,
this business of becoming an American. Call it early conditioning – the fact
that my father loved westerns, either in print or on the screen. He had books
upon books on American history, American culture, and he could go toe-to-toe
with anyone when it came to native American tribal history.

Then there was my mum and her stories of “Yanks” in wartime
London. I loved the images of
confidence, of swagger, of generosity and a sense that everything was bigger in
America. Of course, that put off a lot
of people (“Over paid, over-sexed and over here,” as the saying went). I think I’ve told this story before on Naked Authors, but I will tell it again,
because I love it.

My mother turned seventeen in the summer of 1944, and on her
birthday – a Saturday – she and a couple of friends were in Hyde Park, London,
enjoying a sunny day.Along came three
young US Airmen, their caps tilted, their eyes on the girls.And of course the chat-up began.My mum’s friends told the boys that it was
her birthday, so they asked her what she’d received in the way of gifts. My mum
laughed – it was wartime in a city that had been relentlessly bombed for four years by that
time, and along with rationing meant that she was lucky anyone remembered to
say “Happy Birthday” let alone buy a gift.The guys were shocked – and arranged to meet the girls in a couple of
hours.My mother and her friends thought
they’d never see them again, but at the allotted time and place, there they
were – arms filled with flowers, chocolates and nylon stockings, gifts for my
17-year-old mother.The airmen couldn’t
stay – they had to get back to camp – so they waved and went on their way. My
mother said she watched them running along the path, leaping on and off park
benches, arms outstretched, one of them yelling, “Look at me, I’m a B29.”She offered her chocolates around in the
air-raid shelter that night, but no one would accept (even though they really
wanted one) because they were American chocolates and of course, there was the
suggestion that you had to be “that sort of girl” to get a box of chocolates.
So my mother – who was a bit cheeky, let it be said – sat there and ate every
single chocolate in the box while giving a bite-by-bite description of each
mouthful.

I think I can safely say that every immigrant in that
theater came to America drawn by a story – perhaps that you can be anybody you
want to be, in the USA, if you’re prepared to work for it. I came here borne aloft by stories of America.
I’d entered the US many times as a
visitor, but always knew in my heart that one day I would be here to stay . I was drawn by the mythology of America – but
once here I had to work hard to make my hopes become dreams that came
true. And I am not just waxing lyrical.

America is not a perfect place and never will be – thank the
Lord.But it suits me very well indeed.I think I’ll stay.

Thursday, May 22, 2014

Guest blogger D.J.
Niko is the
pseudonym for Daphne Nikolopoulos, a journalist, author, editor, and
self-proclaimed modern nomad who has spent the better part of two decades
traveling the world. As a former travel writer and zealous adventurer, she has
visited remote spots on six continents, many of which have inspired her novels,
including the award-winning The Tenth Saint and its sequel, The Riddle of
Solomon. Her next two novels will be released in 2015. Daphne was born and
raised in Athens, Greece, and now resides in Florida with her family.

The Rest is History

By D.J. Niko

Researching historical fiction and thrillers with
historical themes is a little like going down the rabbit hole: you have to
enter another world and come out, sweating and panting, on the other side
before you can actually get it.

When you research and write about the ancient world,
that’s especially true. I deal with time periods as far back as the sixteenth
century BCE, when information wasn’t exactly plentiful and the recording of
facts was sketchy at best. Think about it: historical documentation as we know
it wasn’t a thing back then. The ancient Egyptians carved their conquests onto
temple walls, the Israelites had an oral history that got passed down over
thousands of years, the Greeks (before the days of Herodotus) painted pottery
and inscribed ostraca, and on it goes. A few blanks to fill in? You can say
that again!

A lot of people ask me, why the ancient world? Why not
pick something more accessible, like, say, World War II or 1960s London? What
can I say? Doing things the hard way is one of my more charming qualities.
Ahem.

So how do I get my material? For starters, I hang out
with a lot of archaeologists. Archaeology is one of the most important tools in
understanding antiquity, because it provides hard proof of how people lived and
died, when cities flourished and were destroyed, worship practices, and so on. The
scientists working in the field are a wealth of information and, in most cases,
fairly outspoken (and opinionated!) about their research. They are more than
happy to give a novelist an earful.

In researching my first book, The
Tenth Saint, I traveled to Ethiopia and spent time with historians at Aksum
and monks at Lalibela, trying to understand the mindset of the people during
the early centuries of the Common Era, when Christianity first infiltrated the
Abyssinian Empire. I went down into the tombs of Aksum, walked through the
catacombs beneath the rock churches of Lalibela, attended traditional
ceremonies whose practices had not changed since ancient times, hiked to cave
churches in the hinterlands (and I mean hinterlands),
and studied the stele inscriptions of the nation’s early kings. Of course, I
also sampled all the Ethiopian food, beer, coffee, and tej (honey wine) I could get my hands on. Hey, it’s the least I
could do for my readers.

For the next book in the series, The
Riddle of Solomon, I added another layer of inquiry to the standard
archaeological research. The story is set largely in Israel and involves an
antagonist who believes he is the Jewish messiah for whom the world has waited.
This guy is ruthless in amassing the relics that will prove his legitimacy;
chief among them are the plans for building the third temple in Jerusalem,
meaning the original temple plans by King Solomon.

So, to research messianism, Judaic oral tradition, and
the spiritual significance of King Solomon’s story, I consulted a couple of
rabbis. They were very gracious to embrace a Greek Orthodox girl and, over
several meetings, walk her through the fine points of Judaism. It was
illuminating, to say the least, and I think the book is better for it.

For me, there is no substitute for experiencing a
place firsthand and interviewing the experts in person. But life does not
always allow for this. My other means of research include university library
archives, books written by ancient writers (for my current project, I am
reading Plutarch, Herodotus, and Pausanias), museums, and, of course, the
Internet. And this happens throughout the writing process, not just in the
front end.

Because I’m all about recycling and reusing, I use
this information in other ways. In recent years, I’ve been repackaging the
research and lecturing about it to private groups and continuing education
students at academic institutions. It’s just another vehicle to get my name out
there, sell books, and share some of this fascinating knowledge in a more
direct way.

As I state in my Twitter profile, I have become an
antiquities geek thanks to all this research (I’m really fun at cocktail
parties), but if the work seems more authentic because of it, I’ll take the
ridicule.

I will leave you with this fun quote by Homer: “I did
not lie! I just created fiction with my mouth!”

Thursday, May 15, 2014

We are still talking about the use of dialogue in a novel. As with everything else in the novel that you’re
writing, you get to make all the choices. It doesn't matter what other people think. If you want a character to drop the F-bomb
every three sentences like a Martin Scorsese film, it's your call. If you want everyone to talk like they're on
the set of Mr. Rogers, you can do that too. Your characters should all speak differently. Obviously some would be educated, some
illiterate, some Penn State grads.

This week let's talk about something a little different: Writing in
dialects. Whether it is someone trying
to sound like they're from the American South or giving a character a foreign
accent, these choices can define a character almost more than anything
else. But they can also distract the
reader from the story.

Let's check in with some of my blog mates to get their take on how they
handle dialect or accents:

From
Jackie:

Jackie (on left)

I have had a fair bit of experience
with dialect and accents with my series, and have approached it in different
ways. In the period of time in which my books are set, the accent could
change from village to village, so having that sense in the books has been
important with regard to establishing a sense of place. In the Maisie
Dobbs series one of the characters in particular has a Cockney accent (and that
is not necessarily a “London” accent, as there is also rhyming slang to deal
with). I used spelling and punctuation to emphasize the accent in the
first three books, then afterwards I toned it down a bit - I realized that a little
dab was enough to get the point across, plus committed series readers had a
sense of the character/s by that time, and new readers who came in at book 4 or
5 or whatever often went back to the beginning and started over with the first
book in the series. In my new book THE CARE AND MANAGEMENT OF LIES (a
standalone non series, non-mystery) to be published in July, I have employed a
couple of different methods, including description - this is an example:

“Look you bloody fool. Look
and remember. She’s right beautiful.” He pronounced the word
“boodiful” in his rounded Sussex brogue.

I have also described a way of
speaking in the same way that I might paint a picture of a place, using
metaphor - for example, I used that method in AN INCOMPLETE REVENGE, for
example, when I wanted to convey a sense of the speech pattern of Romany
gypsies.

From Patty:

Use dialects sparingly in your
writing. I’m saying this mostly as a reader who gets irritated when the story

Patty

comes to a crashing halt while I puzzle out what the characters are saying. It
may be authentic. It may be the way people talk in that neck of the woods, but
by now you should have learned from James O. Born that the way people talk in
reality is not the way dialogue should be written. Real speech is often boring
with a lot of pauses and ahs and other time-wasters. Boring writing is not what
you want for your dear readers. It will make them grumpy and may cause them to
throw your book across the room. After that, they will likely not buy the next
one.

Unless your target audience readily
understands a specific regional dialect, i.e., a Southern drawl, capture
instead the cadence and flow of how a character speaks. If your character’s
first language is not English, perhaps leave out words like “the” and mix up
verb tenses. Also be careful of using too many foreign phrases unless you can
find a tricky way to translate them. Otherwise, your readers will feel left out
and possibly angry. So, how do you do this? Listen to people talking at work,
on the bus, in a restaurant, at a baseball game, and everywhere else. Bonne
chance et amusez-vous! "Good luck and have
fun to you, too!"

From me:

In Jim's Mind

Having grown up in Florida when it was still considered part of the South
and gone to graduate school in Mississippi, I am particularly sensitive to poor
attempts to emulate a southern accent. In truth, there is no one southern accent. Each region has its own nuances that are
readily identifiable to other Southerners. I would rarely mistake someone from Tennessee with someone from North
Florida. Yet most writers tend to think
of a southern accent as being the same everywhere.

From another perspective, I have a difficult time telling the different
New York accents apart. One way I avoid
offending New Yorkers is I don't try to use a dialect when they speak in my
novels.

A valuable aspect of using a dialect or foreign accent is to play on the
stereotypes people hold about others. For instance, a cheap and easy way to make a character seem smug is to
have them use several French phrases when they are speaking or put on a fake
accent. Can you tell me Madonna doesn't
sound ridiculous when she tries to sound like a British person. Frankly, the fact that she lives in England
now should be a grounds for them to break off diplomatic relations with the US.

Good luck with this one.

Our quote this week is:

I know Patty used it last week, but I had it ready to go for weeks. My attorney will be contacting her.

Tuesday, May 13, 2014

The creator of the Beanie Baby hid more than $100 million in secret Swiss bank accounts, failed to report at least another $24 million in income, and evaded more than $5.5 million in federal taxes.
And for this, Chicago Federal District Judge Charles Kocoras sentenced Warner, 69, to two years PROBATION plus 500 hours of community service!

The judge said that Warner's charitable contributions "trumped" his crimes.

Oh, brother!

Here's a shot of a grim Warner the day he pleaded guilty, but I'll bet he's smiling today.

In its brief appealing the sentence, the government points out that:

1. Warner vastly overstated his charitable giving by calculating the $140 million RETAIL price of Beanie Babies he gave away, which actually cost him less than $36 million to produce. The toys were given away over a 14 year period and amounted to less than 2% of Warner's net worth. Of course, he also took a charitable deduction for them.

2. Warner has never revealed where $90 million of the stashed loot came from.

Federal sentencing guidelines called for about four years in prison, yet the government only sought one year. Still, the judge rejected even that. (For the record, Judge Kokoras, 76, has served 34 years on the federal bench, since being appointed by President Carter. I'm beginning to re-think lifetime appointments).

"Society will be best served by allowing him to continue to do his good works," the judge said.

(What? You can't give money from prison?)

"The public humiliation the defendant has suffered is manifest," the judge continued. "Only he knows the private torment he has suffered."

(Oh, Boo Hoo!)

Friends, if you or I cheated the government out of $5.5 million, we'd be doing heavy time. But a billionaire? Well, his humiliation is enough.

Judges have great discretion in sentencing defendants and may "downward depart" from the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, if based on good reasons.
In this case, Judge Kocoras pointed out that the "omitted income" (nice innocent sounding phrase) was but a small fraction of Warner's total income. And, of course, Warner has now paid his back taxes, penalties and a $53 million fine.

(This is called buying your way out of trouble).

Citing Warner's contributions to charity, the judge called him a "very unique individual" because of his "services and kindness to mankind."

(I'm on the verge of tossing my cookies here).

The issue on appeal is whether the judge's "downward departure" was "reasonable."

Hell, no, it wasn't. Do you disagree?

You can read the government's appeal brief here. Warner's lawyers have yet to file their papers, and their client, who owns resorts in Santa Barbara, Mexico, and Hawaii, among other places, plus several luxury hotels, continues to enjoy his freedom.

Monday, May 12, 2014

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve recently finished my latest novel. I’ve read through it, tested the timeline and fixed all the copy editing errors I could find. The next step, at least for me, is to pry the manuscript from my trembling hands and give it to a couple of “beta readers.”

Beta readers Scooter and Riley

As you scholarly types already know, beta is the second letter of the Greek alphabet. Definitions of beta include: (1) “a measure of the risk potential of a stock or an investment portfolio [or book] expressed as a ratio of the stock’s or portfolio’s [or book’s] volatility to the volatility of the market [or other book’s] as a whole.” (2) “A nearly complete prototype of a product [or published novel].” (3) A dear friend who is both brilliant and slightly masochistic who will read your manuscript and expose overwriting, plot holes and cheesy metaphors without worrying about hurting your feelings because he/she knows that’s exactly what you need at this moment.

While waiting for the beta reader’s critique, I am reading the manuscript again and thinking: OMG! I should have waited before sending this steaming heap of crap!!!!

Of course, real writers don’t wait; they immediately begin the next book. I, of course, have spent my time researching why limes are so bloody expensive these days. Forty-nine cents each at Trader Joes, more in other parts of the country! The permanent residents of Margaritaville wonder why.

Blame it on Mexican drug cartels. The state of Michoacán, which is one of the world’s largest producers of limes and avocados, has been controlled by drug cartels for years. Sinaloa, as well. As the U.S. consumption of cocaine declines and marijuana becomes legal in more states, the cartels are expanding their criminal enterprises…to limes? According to an article in The New Yorker titled "The Hunt for El Chapo"

“…the price of limes in U.S grocery stores has doubled in the past few years because cartels are taxing Mexico’s citrus farmers.”

Perhaps this lime issue will end up as fodder for my next novel. One never knows. Does that mean I'm writing?

Friday, May 09, 2014

I’ve set about reading a few classics lately.Not Dickens, or Austen, or Hemingway or
Ftizgerald – though I like to go back to them.Instead I’ve been picking up novels I enjoyed when I was younger, some
of them you might never have even heard of.And I’ve not wanted an ebook or even a brand new paperback; instead I’ve
gone to the used book websites looking for old copies. Not first editions, but
instead the books with slightly battered bindings and foxing on the pages.I’ve wanted to read the book as it was when
it was first published – minus the moldy bits, that is.But that’s not all. I’ve been looking for
books that had an impact beyond the bestseller list, beyond whatever it was
that made the book a classic. I’m looking for books that changed something in
the world – and that’s a tall order.

Over the past few days I’ve read a book you may be familiar
with: The Citadel by A. J. Cronin, first published in 1937.

First of all, let’s look at the author, if
you’ve never come across the book.Archibald Joseph Cronin was a Scottish physician and novelist, though we
know which one came first, and where he acquired the passion for his stories.

He not only qualified as a physician, but
also achieved many other prestigious letters of affiliation after his name –
including M.D. (In Britain M.D. is an advanced medical research degree; a
medical doctor's designation is M.B., MBBS or MBChB)Cronin spent
many years working as a doctor in mining towns, and became the Medical
Inspector of Mines for Great Britain.He
engaged in ground-breaking research pointing to the link between inhalation of
dust and pulmonary disease, though he was no desk-job doc – he went down the
mines to treat men involved in all manner of accidents and disasters, often putting his life at risk to save the injured.But he also experienced the other side of the
medical coin, quite literally, and held a practice in Harley Street, London – where all
the best and highest-paid doctors still like to hang out their shingle.And this was at a time when a poor person
would stand little chance of being admitted to any hospital.To give you some context, in the year the
book was published, my grandmother carried her six-year-old son on her back
from hospital to hospital trying to get him admitted because he was suffering
from an acute appendicitis. They hadn’t
the money to pay for surgery. By the
time a doctor agreed to see him, the appendix had burst and he almost died due
to peritonitis.

The Citadel is the
story of a doctor who begins his career in a Welsh mining village and who, as
time goes on, loses his way.He starts
out with such integrity – he’s poor, yet dedicated – but upon moving to London he
sees the money other doctors are making, and he realizes how easy it is if you
do a deal here and a deal there and keep the patients coming back for this
treatment and that medicine.In a way
it’s the story of Icarus flying too high – though Manson doesn’t completely
lose his wings.But here’s the thing – via the novel Cronin advocated a free public health service in order to stop
those doctors who "raised
guinea-snatching and the bamboozling of patients to an art form.”(FYI:A guinea was one pound and one shilling). He also believed fiercely in a more equitable system, that the poor should enjoy the same medical services as the rich.

For
publisher Victor Gollancz the book became the biggest bestseller in his career
until that point, yet at the same time Cronin made enemies within the medical
profession (the fat cats) and there were those who tried to get the book
banned.In the United States The Citadel won the National Book Award
in 1937.But perhaps the greatest legacy
of the book was the impact it had on healthcare in the United Kingdom. It
became one of the powerful contributory factors in the establishment of the
National Health Service.The Citadel's message and its success created the tipping point, along with the women’s vote and the fact that the
colossal number of civilian casualties in the 1939-45 war changed the way comprehensive health provision was viewed (you couldn't ethically charge people for injuries inflicted by the enemy in a time of war, could you?) - it also helped that a new Prime Minister, Clement Atlee, believed that
if a country could raise the money to go to war, it could find the money to
take care of the people.Like it or not,
The Citadel had tidal wave effect on public opinion.

I
remember exactly why I first picked up The
Citadel from our local library.On a rainy Sunday afternoon when I was a kid, when old black and white movies were the
only thing on either of the two available TV channels in Britain at the time, I was completely captivated by Robert Donat in the role of the young doctor, Andrew Manson, in the original movie version of The Citadel.In one scene a baby has apparently been
stillborn to an older mother who had dearly wanted a child.Remembering something obscure in his
training, Manson calls for a bowl of water as cold as can be, and another hot
to the touch.Fiercely he immerses the
baby first in one bowl and then another, back and forth until at last a cry is
heard and the child survives.It was a harrowing
scene as only an actor like Donat could make it.

I’m
not saying The Citadel is everyone’s
cup of tea, but even some 77 years after publication, it has worth and is thought
provoking – as an aside, in one scene Andrew Manson, even complains of the many reps from drug
companies who are pursuing him to promote their products. Cronin said of his
novel, "I have written in The Citadel all I feel about the medical
profession … this is not an attack against individuals, but against a
system."

Well,
good for him.He made a difference from
the moment that book hit the stands.

Now
I’m interested in what you have to say – if there was a list of novels that
made a real measurable difference in the world, what books do you think should
be on the list? I’m thinking of books that changed the way people look at the
world, stories that have affected public opinion, that – dare I say it –
impacted legislation, or made life easier for people who needed it to be
so.

Take
care, and have a good weekend. I’ll be in Cannon Beach, Oregon for a couple of days – I’m honored to
be the guest speaker at a conference for nurses and am doing a couple of events
in honor of National Nurses Week.How
great is that?